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Supercool 2022 Movie Review Poster Trailer Online

I want to say that Supercool is an immature coming of age comedy, filled with crass humor and jokes about the male and female anatomy. However, that would suggest this movie is humorous, when in reality, Supercool is a boring, unfunny, and uninspired take on 2007’s Superbad.

The story revolves around best friends Neil (played by Jake Short) and Gilbert (Miles J. Harvey). The two are socially awkward, yet they want to get invited to the big weekend party which is, of course, hosted by Summer (Madison Davenport), the girl Neil is obsessed with. The twist here is that when Neil makes a wish at 11:11 PM his outward appearance is changed into that of a young male model. Reinvigorated with a new sense of self-confidence, Neil prepares to make a lasting impression at Summer’s party.

Now before I come down on the movie, I should point out that I fully realize movies like Supercool are meant to be immature. The problem here is the movie’s jokes simply don’t land, and the leads don’t have any sort of chemistry. Short and Harvey’s performances are fine on their own, but when playing off each other, it feels forced. If you watch the trailer for the movie, it’s made up of outlandish sequences all cut together to sell you a good time, but it lacks a certain energy, which really shows in the final product. The movie’s tone is more that of an indie film than a comedy.

Harvey is the overly energetic and perverse best friend. His performance is so over the top for this movie that he and Damon Wayans Jr. find themselves on an adventure of their own, during which the movie stops and becomes a completely different movie. It’s not much better than the movie we’re given, but it does have a touching moment where Wayans has a moment of realization and self-reflection.

The one aspect that sets this movie apart from other teenage hijinks movies is its magical “body swap” angle. The movie never addresses whether the character of Ace – the name Neil give his alternate ego after the movie Ace Ventura Pet Detective – is someone else’s real body or if it’s just an illusion. Either way, it feels I’ve already spent more time on this concept than the movie itself does. Josh Cranston is cast as the handsome version of Neil, and we only get glimpses of him. There’s never a sequence when Cranston is front and center. It’s always Short with the other actors reacting as if they perceive Ace.

Christopher Landon’s Freaky (2020) toyed with the idea of a young high school girl and a serial killer swapping bodies, before exploring the tropes of both horror and body swap comedies. Supercool instead uses this idea as little more than a gimmick, and it ends up being as skin deep as anything else in the script.